Festival Day 5 (Thursday 6/23)

This morning was a little harder to wake up so I got to the festival around 1. At least we all had a good time at the Microsoft party though. The first thing I did was go to the McCann Worldgroup & MRM Worldwide seminar with will.i.am. It was all about how technology amplifies creativity. Will.i.am talked about how different the music industry is with all the technology now available. He said that he makes some songs on the internet and then sends them to someone over e-mail. I thought that was really interesting because he can basically do his job online. But even though technology is huge, he still made reference to the fact that fans still want to see their favorite artists in concert and not just online.

            After the seminar I grabbed some lunch and headed to the young lion’s zone to attend the 20Something master class. 20Something is an advertising agency that is completely run by students in Belgium. They said that it is a challenge for them to find eligible people to fill the positions, but they manage to find some of the most talented students for each area of their business. Their clients get the benefit of getting a fresh perspective from the Y generation.

            Then, a few of us went to go view commercials. We saw 3 different categories which were alcoholic drinks, household cleaning products, and public awareness messages. Most of them were funny but some of the public awareness messages were really sad. Some of the best were Skol beer from Brazil, Febreze air freshener, and a public awareness message about honesty.

            The last thing for the day was our speaker, Amr Salama, from Egypt. He is a filmmaker and talked all about the revolution which was really interesting. He says that news over there is more open now and people don’t really know how to act because they realize that they finally have power. He is making a film right now about a kid pretending to be Muslim, but it got rejected. He is stubborn though, so he said he’s going to do it anyway, even if he goes to jail. One last thing he said that I loved was, “If you don’t believe in the product, don’t sell it.” This is really great advice for us when we try to find a job.